


Ani

by Ibelin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anidala Love Each Other But Never Really Got The Chance To Be Married, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Padme Is Third Wheeling To Anakin and Obi Wan A Little Bit Even When Obi Wan's Not There, Pet Names, This Is Super Short And Kind Of Pointless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibelin/pseuds/Ibelin
Summary: “So,” she said deliberately, letting the word catch his attention. “If I’m the only one who calls you Ani, what does Obi-Wan call you?”“He just calls me Anakin.”Affectionately, Padme said, “You’re still such a bad liar.”
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 41
Kudos: 479
Collections: SW Especially Satisfying Stories





	Ani

“Padme?”

She heard Anakin’s voice and sat up from her rather uncharacteristic slump. Any visitor would have been welcome just now to distract Padme from the newest Security Committee bulletin, but it was Anakin, and that was an unexpected gift. “I’ll be right out, Ani!”

Standing, Padme left Senator Amidala at her desk with the bulletin, and walked out to the sitting room to greet her husband. 

Anakin was a tall, lean shadow where he had propped himself against the back of the couch. A tap at the control pad raised the lights, and Padme wasn’t surprised to find his eyes on her already; he didn’t need the lights to know where she was. The look on his face was soft, quieter than usual, and he held out his hands to her in a mute plea she couldn’t help but answer.

He pulled her in, kissing her and wrapping her up in the hug that Padme had come to regard as the safest place in the galaxy. She felt the chill still on his lips and nose from the nighttime wind of the speeder drive over, and the solid warmth of his shoulders under her hands. “I didn’t know you were back,” she murmured into the space between them.

“I’m not, officially. Have to be off again in the morning,” Anakin said. 

He didn’t explain why, and she didn’t ask. They were experts at this by now, Padme thought not without a little sadness. Reaching up, she pressed her palm against his cheek. “Why are you looking at me like that, Ani?”

“Like what? Like I love you more than anything?”

Flattering, maybe, but a deflection nonetheless. Kissing him once more, Padme stepped slightly away and teased, “Well, I should hope that’s always how you look at me. How much time do you have?”

“No meetings tonight,” he told her. 

“Oh,” she said, the barely-breathed word the only one she had to express her gladness. _Morning_ meant early, but they would still have almost all night together. She would probably attend tomorrow’s Security Committee meeting with a headache from lack of sleep, but that was a small inconvenience when they got so few of these chances. “Have you eaten?” 

Anakin shook his head, which was hardly surprising. Taking his hand, Padme pulled him toward the kitchen. 

“We can have dinner together, then.” Saying it felt strange, like they were children playing house instead of husband and wife of nearly two years. 

Padme half expected — half hoped — that he would grin at her suggestively and say, _Yeah. Dinner_. He didn’t. Anakin just leaned against the counter as she got out one of the meals pre-prepared for tomorrow, and he kept looking at her. Perhaps it was only the fact that most of the lights were still off, but his eyes seemed dark.

“You’re the only one who calls me _Ani_ , now.”

Carefully, Padme set two plates onto the small kitchen table. This one was foldable, hidden away whenever she hosted meetings or dinner parties in the dining room, but where she and her handmaidens ate most of their meals when they were alone. “Does it bother you?”

To her it was a dear name — the name for the kind, generous boy that he still was. To other people Anakin was a hero, a general, a magic-wielding warrior out of some kind of storybook legend, but they didn’t know his heart. Padme had thought he still liked it, but he was being so strange and quiet...

“No, I like it,” he said. “Reminds me of my mom.”

Padme let the glass she was holding drop onto the counter. Instantly, everything else was forgotten. How could she have been so stupid? The second anniversary of their marriage was coming up in a few weeks. Which also meant, very soon, the anniversary of Geonosis, of the loss of his hand, of the war’s beginning, and of his mother’s death. 

“Anakin,” she said helplessly. “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged, just a partial movement of one shoulder, like if he could avoid acknowledging it, maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much. Padme turned to press herself against his side, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head against his shoulder. “I love you.”

There was no other comfort she could offer, no way she could help. Where was eloquent Senator Amidala at times like these?

“I love you too.” His fingers combed the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “You do help. Just being here helps.”

Padme sniffed, never sure whether having her thoughts read was a useful tool for efficient communication or just deeply unsettling. “Do you want to talk about her?”

Anakin shook his head, so she held him for a few minutes more. The warming food beeped for the third time, and she moved away with a stifled sigh. He still had to eat. She didn’t know how he was expected to do the things he did with as little food and rest as he seemed to get. “Sit,” she told him. He obeyed, and Padme took a deep, slow breath before following suit. 

If he didn’t want to talk about his mother, he wanted to be distracted. Usually, Anakin asked her questions about her day or told stories of his or Ahsoka’s latest hijinks; they had so few moments to be alone that they almost never ran out of conversation topics. Now, though, he seemed to eat woodenly, hardly even noticing where he was.

Had he been like this all day? Had he been like this last year, when all these anniversaries had come together, and he had been off-planet, who-knows-where in the galaxy, alone? 

Well, he probably hadn’t been _alone_ , Padme thought.

“So,” she said deliberately, letting the word catch his attention. “If I’m the only one who calls you Ani, what does Obi-Wan call you?”

“Obi-Wan?” He said the name slowly, like he couldn’t fathom what it meant in this context.

“Obi-Wan. He raised you for ten years — there must be something.”

There was light dawning in Anakin’s eyes, and with it the awkward bashfulness that he still hadn’t quite outgrown. “He just calls me Anakin.”

Affectionately, Padme said, “You’re still such a bad liar.”

“Well we can’t all be politicians,” he said, still slightly defensive. 

Diplomatically, Padme refrained from pointing out that _he_ was the one who could read minds. 

Anakin sighed, defeated. “Usually it was padawan, my padawan, my young padawan, my young apprentice, my _very_ young apprentice, my dear padawan, my dear former padawan,” he said, rattling them off like items on a grocery list. “He’s had to get a little more creative, now.”

“And?”

“My friend, my young friend, my dear friend, poster boy, young one, Lord of the Skies, my right hand, my dear—”

“Oh _really_.”

“I think it’s because he goes to say _my dear padawan_ and then realizes he can’t and gets stuck.” 

Intrigued, she asked, “Is there any footage?”

“I hope not.” Anakin’s tone was dark, but his cheeks were still slightly flushed and he made an effort at rolling his eyes. He was already far more alive than before, his eyes actually focused on her, so Padme counted that as a victory.

“So he’s never called you Ani? Not even once?”

“Well,” said Anakin, and then stopped.

“So he has?”

“Well,” he said again, “it was only once. And I’m pretty sure it was on purpose.”

He was clearly floundering, so Padme waited. It was always her first instinct to try to offer him words or prompt him with suggestions, but that only sowed more confusion. She had learned to be patient.

“Obi-Wan never met my mom. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know she called me that. So, if you think about it, he’s really only heard it from Jar Jar and from you.”

“Didn’t Qui-Gon call you Ani?” She squinted, trying to remember.

“Maybe. I think so. I don’t know if Obi-Wan was there, though. It’s a very... you-associated name.”

Now his hesitancy made sense. Padme was never going to be a peaceful topic for the two of them unless things changed dramatically. It saddened her that there was so much of Anakin’s life that she couldn’t be a part of, that she had to pretend not even to care about. And there was so much of Anakin that Obi-Wan didn’t know about, as well. 

Sometimes Padme tried to imagine a future in which she and Anakin loved each other openly. No matter how she twisted the circumstances, though, she never managed to do it without involving disgrace and pain for both of them. The queen would never allow Padme to continue as senator, and Anakin would have to leave the Order. 

By now, she had mostly given up on those daydreams. The present had enough trouble of its own.

“Do you remember when I called you a few months ago? We had just left Mandalore.” When Padme nodded, Anakin went on, “It was just after we ended the call and I left my cabin. I ran into Obi-Wan and he asked me what I was doing, and I said nothing—”

“Very convincingly, I’m sure.”

“—Hey. Anyway, that was when he said it. He came to get me for dinner, but he called me Ani. And he said it like that. _Ani_.”

Padme had to smile. He pronounced the nickname like it was some portent of doom. “You think he knows about us?”

“I don’t know! Sometimes I think he knows everything, but sometimes... Why else would he have said that, though? He’s never called me Ani before or since.”

“Would it be so bad?” asked Padme. “Even if he does know, he hasn’t said anything to anyone.”

“Yeah.” Anakin had sprawled back in his chair, frowning slightly.

“There is one very important thing we’ve skipped over,” she said. “Lord of the Skies?”

He snorted, this time giving her a proper eye roll. “He’s just trying and failing to be funny, as usual.”

“You can’t tell me there’s not a story.”

“There is,” admitted Anakin grudgingly, “but it’s really not as hilarious as Obi-Wan thinks.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you.”

Left with no other choice, Anakin told the story.

It involved a fifteen-year-old Anakin stranded on a low-technology jungle planet. Under hot pursuit, he had improvised some kind of flying contraption consisting mostly of sticks and a tarp, and hurled himself off a cliff. Gliding to safety, he found that his escape had been witnessed from below, and some of the planet’s natives had a deity or mythological figure called the Lord of the Skies. By the time Obi-Wan had found him, he had been painted completely red from head to toe, wearing a crystal crown, and enduring a three-day feast in his own honor.

“They offered me wives, Padme. Wives! Plural!” Anakin had his elbows on the table, his hands splayed to cover most of his face. “I didn’t get it. I thought they were offering food. You can imagine how that went.”

Padme, who had already been laughing, laughed harder.

“Obi-Wan likes to remind me of it whenever my flying gets a little too exciting. _All right, Lord of the Skies, take it down a notch_ ,” he said, in a scathing imitation of Obi-Wan’s accent, but he was grinning.

She smiled across the table at Anakin as her laughter faded, satisfied to see that his eyes were clear and his voice had the energy she was used to. Padme had known, with the instincts that served her so well in politics, that making him talk about Obi-Wan would be the distraction he needed from his thoughts. The two of them made each other smile, even in the direst circumstances. Padme had witnessed it herself more than once, and guessed that Obi-Wan had probably engineered a conversation much like this a year ago today.

It was good to know Anakin wasn’t alone when he had to leave her — that he went into battle with friends at his side. She was glad that he was smiling right now, even if she wished it could have been her that made him smile. 

“Are you done?” she asked.

“Yeah. Should we—”

“Leave it. Threepio will be glad to have something to do tomorrow.” Padme stood, reaching for Anakin’s hand again. “In the meantime, I suggest that you take advantage of not being deployed and use my extremely luxurious ‘fresher to shower before bed.”

She turned to lead the way to the bedroom, but Anakin took two steps behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Lifting her into his arms without effort, he said meaningfully, “Ah yes. To _shower_.” When he kissed her, Padme could feel his grin. Her hands tightening in his hair, she returned the kiss with all the fragile hope in her heart. 

They didn’t have all those memories. They hadn’t had time to make them yet. But they did have this moment, and Anakin was here right now. He had chosen to be here. 

He always did, and Padme thought that was as good as a promise. 

They would have time.

**Author's Note:**

> I made a post on tumblr and then this happened.
> 
> CITATIONS:  
> \- "Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34
> 
> \- "The two of them made each other smile..." is paraphrasing from a passage in _Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth_ by Karen Miller.


End file.
